Water, water, everywhere: weekend disaster poses legal questions

An employee approached a table that had already been seated — and been served water — and informed the couple of what had happened. Their tap water was immediately replaced with bottled water.

The diners, who had already sipped from their water glasses, were none too pleased with the news.
A few hours later, they e-mailed the establishment and warned management that if anyone at their table became ill, the restaurant could expect a lawsuit.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that police made the rounds and told area businesses not to use the city’s water.

Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys President Chris A. Milne says the restaurant has no reason to worry since a suit such as the one it was threatened with would likely be tossed out of court in short order.

Where the law does not hold such establishments strictly liable, a judge or jury would have to deem their conduct unreasonable for them to be held responsible.

“The devil is in the details, but there would have to be some type of showing of notice or duty,” Milne says. “It certainly seems to be reasonable for the [restaurant] to rely on the quality of the municipal water supply, and it’s hard to see how there would be a violation found here.”

Milne says the real question in the wake of the weekend’s water disaster is whether the state or a municipality could sue the water main’s manufacturer.

“Given the magnitude of this, my thought is that there should be a lot of resources spent by the commonwealth in researching and trying to understand what happened,” he says. “If these companies weren’t reasonably careful and were, in fact, negligent, why the heck should the taxpayers be the ones to pay?”

If problems are uncovered, Milne says, the companies would be wise to start bracing for a costly class-action lawsuit.

If it turned out that a state or local agency played a hand in what happened, G.L.c. 258, §4 would limit liability to $100,000, Milne says.

“On top of that, there are all kinds of exceptions to their liability, including if the event happened as a result of the negligence of somebody else,” he says. “In this case, their first defense would probably be that somebody else was to blame.”